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Searching... Silver Falls Library | MYS PINTOFF | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Pintoff, S. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Pintoff, S. 2011 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
The murder of Judge Hugo Jackson is out of Detective Simon Ziele's jurisdiction in more ways than one. For one, it's high-profile enough to command the attention of the notorious new police commissioner, since Judge Jackson was presiding over the sensational trial of Al Drayson. Drayson, an anarchist, set off a bomb at a Carnegie family wedding, but instead of killing millionaires, it killed passersby, including a child. The dramatic trial has captured the full attention of 1906 New York City.
Furthermore, Simon's assigned precinct on Manhattan's West Side includes the gritty Tenderloin but not the tonier Gramercy Park, which is where the judge is found in his locked town house with his throat slashed on the night before the jury is set to deliberate. But his widow insists on calling her husband's old classmate criminologist, Alistair Sinclair, who in turn enlists Ziele's help. Together they must steer Sinclair's unorthodox methods past a police forcethat is so focused on rounding up Drayson's supporters that they've all but rejected any other possibilities.
Once again, Stefanie Pintoff's combination of vital characters and a fascinating case set amongst the sometimes brutal and sometimes glittering history of turn-of-the-century New York makes for totally compelling reading in Secret of the White Rose , the third novel in her Edgar Award-winning series.
Author Notes
Stefanie Pintoff is the author of A Curtain Falls and In the Shadow of Gotham . In the Shadow of Gotham is the winner of the 2010 Edgar Award for Best First Novel and the Washington Irving Book Prize, and she has earned nominations for the Agatha, Anthony and Macavity Awards. She is also a graduate of Columbia University Law School and has a Ph.D. in literature from New York University. Now a full-time writer, she lives with her husband and daughter on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Edgar-winner Pintoff proves with her third historical (after 2010's A Curtain Falls) that she's the equal of Caleb Carr. In the fall of 1906, New York City is fixated by the murder trial of anarchist Al Drayson, who planted a dynamite bomb meant for Andrew Carnegie in a horse-drawn cab that exploded and killed five bystanders. While Drayson's fate remains unresolved, criminologist Alistair Sinclair rouses Det. Simon Ziele in the middle of the night with some shocking news: someone has cut the throat of Hugo Jackson, the judge presiding over Drayson's trial, and left a Bible and a white rose near the corpse. Sinclair reveals that Jackson was an old friend, but Ziele eventually concludes that his colleague is hiding something. Drayson's accomplices are the obvious suspects, but Ziele is troubled by his commissioner's refusal to consider alternative theories, even as the killer adds to his body count. The author couples spot-on period details with her most sophisticated plot yet. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Detective Simon Ziele (A Curtain Falls, 2010, etc.) investigates his third case in Gilded Age New York.The city is riveted by the 1906 murder trial of anarchist Al Drayson, who aimed a bomb at Andrew Carnegie but killed innocents. Presiding judge Hugo Jackson receives death threats from both revolutionaries who demand Drayson's freedom and outraged citizens who want him executed immediately. Few are shocked when the judge is found murdered the night after closing arguments. Criminologist Alistair Sinclair, who eagerly uses his society connections to examine the case for clues to the formation of the terrorist mind, drags along his friend Detective Ziele, who lost his fiance, Hannah, two years ago in a tragic shipwreck, and is now stunned to learn that Hannah's younger brother Jonathan became a violent radical leader. The scene of the crime reveals surprising details. Why was the judge's throat slit when anarchists usually prefer dynamite? More intriguingly, why was the judge left with his hand on a Bible and a white rose? Alistair consults his longtime friend Angus Porter, another prominent judge and a student of symbolism. Meanwhile, the Police Commissioner taps Ziele for his connections to his old immigrant neighborhood. Hours after Alistair sees him, Porter is also found dead with another Bible and another white rose. Despite these peculiar clues, the Commissioner insists that immigrant anarchists be rounded up to pay for the crimes. When the prison holding the radicals is hit by a bomb, Ziele realizes he must bring the killer to justice before the city explodes in violence and the courts become a lynch mob.Pintoff explores New York at the turn of the century, from its society gentlemen's clubs to its teeming immigrant neighborhoods, without ever resorting to kitsch or stereotypes. Densely plotted, rich in moral ambiguity and guaranteed to grip readers to the very last page.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The third in Edgar Award-winning Pintoff's series of historical mysteries set in turn-of-the-century New York City is every bit as action-packed and intriguing as its predecessors. The team of NYPD Detective Simon Ziele and criminologist Alistair Sinclair again provide a zingy mix of old-fashioned detective work and then-newfangled forensic science. An anarchist is on trial for planting a dynamite bomb in a horse-drawn carriage that was going to bring Andrew Carnegie to a wedding. The bomb went off, missing Carnegie but killing five bystanders, including a four-year-old boy. The night before the verdict, the judge presiding over the trial is found dead in his locked townhouse, his throat slashed, his hand propped on a Bible, and a white rose resting next to his hand. The judge's widow calls in his old classmate, criminologist Sinclair, who calls upon Ziele. Both investigators have to buck the police powers' insistence on a quick solution. Filled with great period detail.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
The city isn't what it used to be in A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $25.99), as Matt Scudder, the independent (and unlicensed) gumshoe in Lawrence Block's timeless New York crime novels, sits down late one night to reminisce with Mick Ballou, the proprietor of Grogan's Open House, a bar in Hell's Kitchen. Gentrification has gussied up that once raffish neighborhood, and "a gentler and more refined bunch" of patrons has replaced the colorful and largely criminal riffraff that lent character to the old saloon. But instead of forcing Scudder to make his peace with this new world, Block thoughtfully sends him back to the early 1970s, when he was still a working cop and crime was still "the leading occupation" in the neighborhood. After watching a former schoolmate named Jack Ellery beat a robbery rap, Scudder loses sight of this small-time thief until they both show up at the same Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Scudder is cautiously approaching the first anniversary of his sobriety, while Ellery is tackling the ninth step of the 12-step program - the one about making amends. But someone murders Ellery while he's working his way through the list of people he's hurt, and his A.A. sponsor turns to Scudder for help. Since the story takes place in the dark ages before electronic messaging, Scudder goes about his mission the old-fashioned way, hoofing it all over town in search of the people on Ellery's list. Striking out from the residential hotel room he calls home and organizing his day around the A.A. meetings that are his lifeline, he plods through the patchwork of neighborhoods that make up the metropolis, noting landmarks like the Church of St. Anthony of Padua in Soho, the twin towers of the World Trade Center and a couple of Irish bars on Columbus Avenue, wondering at the changes taking place all around him. Block is a mesmerizing raconteur, the kind who collects the stories he hears on the street and then reprises the voices of the storytellers, many of them long gone. Although lightly struck, that elegiac note reverberates throughout the book, which begins as one sad drunk's personal quest for redemption and becomes a lament for all the old familiar things that are now almost lost, almost forgotten. In his zeal to import mad-dog serial killers to the peaceable kingdom of his native Norway, Jo Nesbo is compelled to devise some pretty outlandish schemes to occupy Inspector Harry Hole, his maverick detective on the Oslo crime squad. In THE SNOWMAN (Knopf, $25.95), Nesbo puts those engineering skills to use in a fiendishly complex and terrifically entertaining plot about a psychopath who waits for the year's first snowfall to build menacing snowmen outside the homes of his victims, all married women cheating on their spouses. Nesbo has a horrormeister's flair for transforming natural scenes into ominous situations, so those recurring images of beady-eyed snowmen can ruin a walk in the woods or a stolen hour of sexual pleasure. The atmosphere of guilt and gloom is also a reflection of Harry's moody thoughts about his own troubled relationships, his obsessive work ethic and his unhealthy preoccupation with the nature of evil. ("Like whether madness and evil are two different entities, or whether when we no longer understand the purpose of destruction we simply term it madness.") Harry is a cool hero, but whenever his musings get a bit sticky it's worth remembering that he's afraid of the dark. If the sappy title isn't enough of a turnoff, SECRET OF THE WHITE ROSE (Minotaur, $24.99), Stefanie Pintoff's third mystery set in New York at the turn of the last century, lays a heavy authorial hand on small period details that normally function as grace notes. Detective Simon Ziele, the action hero in this series, is eager to point out that he has installed "the modern black and brass Strowger dial telephone" in his rooms, while his sleuthing partner, the criminologist Alistair Sinclair, stoutly declares his preference for the older, more expensive electric cabs over "the new, faster gasoline cabs." Despite her awkward handling of such particulars, Pintoff delivers a rousing and admirably fair account of the anarchist movement that was unnerving the city at this time. The fictional hook is the murder of the presiding judge in the sensational trial of an anarchist who caused the deaths of five people, including a child, during a failed bomb attack on the industrialist Andrew Carnegie. But the scene that really sizzles is the political rally at Ehrhardt's Beer Hall, at which anarchists, socialists and unionists vent their anger at the deplorable working conditions of the period - and make a stronger case for their cause than they're normally allowed in historical mysteries. In his first novel, UNTOUCHABLE (Tyrus, $24.95), Scott O'Connor speaks softly and somehow manages to make something beautiful of unspeakable matters - like the gruesome mop-up after someone has taken a gun to his head. These are the matters that fall to David Darby, a strapping fellow with an armful of tattoos and a sensitive attitude toward his job as a trauma site technician. If Darby's profession has made him something of an untouchable, his young son has become a pariah at school because he refuses to speak, a selfimposed punishment after the death of his mother. ("He had," he's convinced, "made her sick and sad.") O'Connor tells a wisp of a story, but in a voice so insistently stirring, you want to lean in close to catch every word. In his latest New York crime novel, Lawrence Block goes back to the 1970s, when his P.I. was a working cop.
Library Journal Review
New York City is gripped by anarchist riots and bombings in the fall of 1906. One bombing goes horribly awry, a child is killed, and the arrested young suspect endures the wrath of the city. On the eve of his trial, the presiding judge is murdered in his home, with a Bible under his hand and a white rose next to his corpse. NYPD detective Simon Ziele once again is sleuthing with his mentor, criminologist Alistair Sinclair, and Sinclair's widowed daughter-in-law, Isabella, using the new and controversial method of profiling. When another judge is slain in a similar manner, finding the motivation behind the crimes takes on greater urgency. For one thing, both judges were friends of Alistair; his life is probably in danger, too. VERDICT Pintoff is at the top of her game in this third entry in her Edgar Award-winning historical series (In the Shadow of Gotham; A Curtain Falls). Hand sell to readers who still talk about Caleb Carr's The Alienist. Suspenseful and overlaid with symbols, ciphers, and early psychological study-a real winner. [Library marketing; regional author appearances.] (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.